ross pieces, and the interstices caulked with papyrus. The ends rose
high above the water, and to prevent hogging were often attached by a
truss running longitudinally over crutches from stem to stern.

The Assyrian and Babylonian vessels described by Herodotus (i. 194),
built up of twigs and boughs, and covered with skins smeared with
bitumen, were really more like huge coracles and hardly deserve the name
of boats.

The use of boats by the Greeks and Romans is attested by the frequent
reference to them in Greek and Latin literature, though, as regards such
small craft, the details given are hardly enough to form the basis of an
accurate classification.

We hear of small boats attendant on a fleet ([Greek: kelaetion], Thuc.
i. 53), and of similar craft employed in piracy (Thuc. iv. 9), and in
one case of a sculling boat, or pair oar ([Greek: akation amphaerikon],
Thuc. iv. 67), which was carted up and down between the town of Megara
and the sea, being used for the purpose of marauding at night. We are
also familiar with the passage in the Acts (xxvii.) where in the storm
they had hard work "to come by the boat"; which same boat the sailors
afterwards "let down into the sea, under colour as though they would
have cast anchors out of the foreship," and would have escaped to land
in her themselves, leaving the passengers to drown, if the centurion and
soldiers acting upon St Paul's advice had not cut off the ropes of the
boat and let her fall off.

There can be little doubt that boat races were in vogue among the Greeks
(see Prof. Gardner, _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, ii. 91 ff.), and
probably formed part of the Panathenaic and Isthmian festivals. It is,
however, difficult to prove that small boats took part in these races,
though it is not unlikely that they may have done so. The testimony of
the coins, such as it is, points to galleys, and the descriptive term
([Greek: neon amilla]) leads to the same conclusion.

It is hardly possible now to define the differences which separated
[Greek: akatos], [Greek: akation], from [Greek: kelaes], [Greek:
kelaetion], or from [Greek: lembos] or [Greek: karabos]. They seem all
to have been rowing boats, probably carvel-built, some with keels
(_acatii modo carinata_, Plin. ix. 19), and to have varied in size, some
being simply sculling boats, and others running up to as many as thirty
oars.

Similarly in Latin authors we have frequent mention of boats
accompanying ships of wa